


What We Used To Be...

by apieformydean



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Angst, FOB, Flashbacks, I know it hurts, I'm so sorry, It was meant to, Love Confessions, M/M, MCR, No Smut, Not Happy, Post-Break Up, Post-Summer of Like, Sad, Sweet Little Dudes, Ten Years Later, Warped Tour 2005, man tears, petekey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-06 15:46:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5422799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apieformydean/pseuds/apieformydean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pete opens the door, and he can see a lanky man leaning against the wall next to it, blond hair ruffled, head hanging low, arms supporting him so he won't fall. His glasses are dirty as he glances up at Pete and he smiles a smile only very drunk people can pull off.</p><p>“Hey, darling.” he greets dreamily and Pete catches himself staring. However, he mumbles a reply.</p><p>“Hi Mikey.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	What We Used To Be...

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry...

Pete would wake up to a loud bang on the door if he was actually _asleep_.

He's sitting at his kitchen table at the dim light of the hallway lamp. He's just staring at his beer can, right hand fidgeting with the rim of it. He's leaning on the other elbow, blinking at the drink but not actually seeing it.

It's the end of summer and the heat is unbearable, even this early in the morning. But that's how the most of this summer was. The Zummer Tour is over, and the other three of the band are on their very well deserved vacations. Joe and his family travelled to Brazil, Andy took his wife and kids to Europe and that adorable fucker 'Trick is in Japan with his family.

That's only Pete who stayed in the States, left alone with his poisonous thoughts.

He can't sleep. He's tried everything, from warm milk to some meds but nothing helped. His brain decided it was time for an almost-mid-life-crisis and his mind has been surprising him with awfully realistic memories from the past. Mainly of the band, where they started and what they've been through, but also some unpleasant ones and some of long-gone lovers. Some of them he really did love. Maybe he'd even fallen for them but failed to recognize it at the time. He regretted a lot of his shitty decisions.

Not like he is unsatisfied with where he is right now. He has so goddamn much money he could quit everything he does right now and wouldn't have to worry in his whole life. His name is a trademark itself and he knows it. It's just so fucking lonely in his fairy tale life that it's not even funny.

He's been awake for alarmingly long now; he's not sure if it has been an hour or two. He peers at the neon green blinking digital numbers on his oven, which makes him realise it has been three.

That's when he hears the bang.

Pete can't imagine who the hell can be at his door at two in the morning. It's probably another drunk asshole - it has happened before, so he wouldn't be _that_ surprised. He decides to just leave them. It's also time for him to go back to bed because he won't be functioning tomorrow if he doesn't get any sleep.

However, the banging continues. Pete just sighs and stands up, leaving his beer on the table, because he's too damn lazy to take it to the bin. He's slowly making his way towards the bedroom, away from the front door.

The knocking intensifies and eventually Pete can't take it any longer.

“Stop it, man, go and annoy someone else!” he calls, not really expecting an answer, so the rough-toned voice and the quite incoherent sentence catches him off-guard.

“Let me the fuck in, Wentz.”

Pete freezes. His breath is caught in his throat and his eyes widen. For a moment his brain is as if it shut down totally. His ears stop functioning; he can no longer hear the quiet ticking of the clock in the living room, the buzzing of his fridge and the muffled sounds of traffic from outside his windows. The only thing echoing in his head is the sentence coming from the other side of the front door. He knows too well who out there is.

He walks to the dark brown wooden door and puts his hand on the door knob. His heart is now hammering against his ribs as he turns it, knowing it's probably a mistake to let him in, probably will turn out _really_ badly, but he just can't help it.

Pete opens the door, and he can see a lanky man leaning against the wall next to it, blond hair ruffled, head hanging low, arms supporting him so he won't fall. His glasses are dirty as he glances up at Pete and he smiles a smile only very drunk people can pull off.

“Hey, darling.” he greets dreamily and Pete catches himself staring. However, he mumbles a reply.

“Hi Mikey.”

 

_“What?” was all Pete could say. He furrowed his eyebrows and stepped closer to Mikey. He took the taller boy's hand in his and looked confusedly at him. He must have misheard something._

_They were standing in the MCR tour bus, after a lazy afternoon. The Warped Tour '05 as almost over, there was just a day left, and then they would get home and sleep in a proper bed finally. Mikey told Pete he wanted to get away from the others so they went in there. The older man thought they would make out or have sex as they usually did; he didn't think there was anything wrong._

_“We have to end this.” Mikey repeated. The black haired man was silent for a moment but then chuckled at the too serious statement._

_“Alright, I get the joke.” Pete grinned at Mikey, pulling his hand to his lips, kissing Mikey's long, pretty fingers. “I know Gee doesn't like me that much, and that fans will go_ crazy _when they find out both of the best looking emos of the States are taken, but I don't care.” Pete tried to look at Mikey in the eye but the younger boy wouldn't let him._

_“No- Pete, it's- it's not a joke.” Mikey mumbled, taking his hand away from Pete and turning towards the door. He looked like as if he was hesitating about leaving without another word and Pete felt his guts tighten._

_“Babe?” he tried, voice a bit higher than usual. “W-why are you saying this? Hey, look at me, please?”_

_“It won't work out, okay?” Mikey still didn't turn around, but Pete knew this was not just a spontaneously said sentence. “We have our own lives that are so different. You have your band, I have mine, and... It could never be a working relationship. We don't match that way.”_

_“Of course we fucking match, what are you talking about?” Pete asked, and gave Mikey a huffing laugh which turned out to be more hysterical than anything else. “Mikeyway, stop it.” Pete tried taking his hand again but as soon as he touched the taller boy, he pulled away._

_“No, Pete, you stop.” he eventually turned around, and his face didn’t show any emotion. "We can't do this, and I'm sorry to hurt you but it's true." he spoke and Pete felt like his lungs were burning. “We're over.”_

“What are you even doing here, Mikes?” Pete asks quietly and lets Mikey stumble into the hall. He closes the door behind his late visitor and leads him in the kitchen.

“Can't I visit an old friend?” the taller man grins at the other and throws himself down on the first chair he reaches. “Give me water?” he asks in a drunken clumsiness.

“Well, considering you live half a continent away from me now, it _is_ pretty strange.” Pete speaks in a cold tone, but takes a glass out of the cupboard and fills it with tap water. He hands it over and stands in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe, hands crossed on his chest.

“Oh, we have been, you know, _around_ and I thought it would be GREAT to come and see you, so here I am!” Mikey takes the water and downs it immediately. Pete doesn't ask who he means by _we_. “Are you not happy to see me?”

“Of course I am.” Pete lies. He bites his lip and knows Mikey won't notice it. The drunk man is too caught up in watching the lights on the other side of the kitchen window.

“How have you been, Pete?”

“Great, actually.” Another lie. It's so easy to stop anyone from asking. They don't care, not really, so they like to believe it when he says there's no problem, even though it's a total lie. “The tour was awesome and now I have ass-ton of free time, time for me and Saint, and, you know, I'm fine-“

“Okay, just one thing, really.” Mikey cuts him off and turns towards the older man, with an index-finger held up. “Could you stop fucking lying?”

Pete swallows.

“What- you're drunk, Mikey, how could you-“

“Also, when did you stop calling me _Mikeyway_ , I'm not aware.” the drunk man looks at him through his dirty glasses and Pete feels his stomach fill with a sick sensation.

“We are no longer twenty-something, I guess nobody calls you that nowadays.” Pete says lowly. It has been years since they last met and the smaller man doesn't want to think about how older he must look in Mikey's eyes now.

“Well, no one _does_.” The younger man speaks in a dreamy voice and shrugs. “I thought you would. You were the only one I didn't hate for calling me that.”

“It just- I can't.” Pete admits, lowering his eyes and staring at the tiles of the kitchen floor. “It brings back too many memories.” Just from saying it out loud, Pete's mind is filled with pictures of them in their band wagons, on stage, in the backstage, just all over Warped '05. “Ten fucking years.” he's not aware he actually whispers it before he does.

“Today.” Mikey comments and Pete looks up at him, confused.

“What?”

“Ten years today.” the taller man repeats. He's leaning on one elbow, on the table. “That's when we broke up.” he says and starts chuckling. There's no joy in it, however; that's the kind of situation when you laugh just to stop yourself from crying. “Happy anniversary.”

 

_“Don't make it so hard.” Mikey said, running his hand through his hair in frustration. “It's not a big deal, let's just... remain friends.” He offered and Pete couldn't believe his ears._

_“You don't just fucking_ remain friends _with someone you used to fuck!” The black haired man yelled, a bit more harshly than necessary._

 _“Wow, you're such a romantic. Good to know that's all we are. We_ were _.” Mikey's face didn't show any emotions, and it annoyed the hell out of Pete. “A semi-regular fuck. I don't even know what I thought.” he whispered, mainly just to himself._

_“Don't- for fuck's sake, it's not like that.” Pete put his face in his hands, and sighed. He hated when Mikey did this. “Please, stop this nonsense and let's just pretend it never happened.”_

_“Why can't you understand that I'm not goddamn joking?!” now Mikey was raising his voice, too. His face was still senseless but his tone showed he was angry._

_“Well that's very good because it wasn't funny anyway!” Pete responded, even though it made little sense. His eyes were clouded by tears and his mind was by the sudden fear of realisation that he could lose Mikey._

_“Pete, I really don't want us to forget each other.” the younger boy said after a moment of silence, in a lower and a bit pained voice. “That_ would _be for the best, though. But I'm not strong enough to let go of you for ever.”_

“How do you know that? You can't know that.” Pete states with a forced lopsided smile and a huff.

Or can he? At the time, Mikey seemed to be so sure about the break-up, so neutral that Pete never would have thought the whole affair meant anything to him.

On the other hand, it meant _everything_ to Pete.

“I sure as fuck know it.” Mikey looks at the older man with an unamused expression. “The end of the summer... it's always so fucked up, man, I keep on thinking but I don't want to… so I get drunk and get high...” he shakes his head and looks away.

“But...” Pete starts but can't finish. Mikey is staring out of the window again, lost in his own drunk head and the shorter man doesn't know how to feel anymore. His mind tells him to send Mikey away, back to whomever he travelled here with and forget about the whole thing. His heart, however, tells the complete opposite.

“But what?” the taller man mutters, glancing back at the other. Pete sees the chaotic thoughts in Mikey's eyes, knows how it must hurt him now, but can't feel sorry for him.

“You aren't supposed to feel like that!” he tells him, tone desperate. “It was _me_ who was a fucking wreck after that, you just walked away from it and... and we didn't see each other for years.” Pete knows the memories shouldn't affect him as much as they do but he can't help it. “I needed you, Mikey, I cared for you so much I haven't cared for anyone, before and since. And you just walked away.”

“You think you were the only one suffering?” Mikey asks with a sarcastic huff. “I couldn't write songs about it, but it was fucking hell for me. But don't you remember? The media loved the topic. Gee and the guys almost gave up on me. I was miserable, a broken kid... I wanted out. Which I never got. Sometimes I still wish I wasn't here. It was one of the biggest mistakes we ever made.”

“Then why did you broke up with me that night?”

They are staring at each other for a time. Pete realises how the years have affected Mikey’s face. He became a man. He was just a boy back then. The last time they saw each other… Pete can’t even recall. It may have been on a tour, or at a party… it’s very foggy. They both acted as if they were happy to see each other, but it really wasn’t the case. Pete tried to avoid Mikey as much as he could and vice versa. They couldn’t stand talking, couldn’t handle socializing with one another; all of it was just too painful.

“At the time it seemed so logical…” Mikey finally spoke. “We had our separate ways, and you knew it, Pete. My brother hated to see us together, our fans would have been upset and for two guys it was... just not acceptable then.”

“All this reasoning. Huh. Almost made me forget you’re smashed.” Pete talks, mainly to himself.

“Someone once told me you can't lie when you're drunk.” Mikey looks at Pete with such a cold expression that the smaller man is thrown back for a moment.

“They must have been an idiot.”

“Indeed. It was you, Pete.”

And Mikey's right. It happened at on the third or fourth night of the tour, after they met for the first time. He said it, right after he told Mikey he was beautiful and he wanted to bang him and would even take him out on a dinner if he wanted to date him. The younger man - _boy_ at the time - went of course unbelievably red and asked Pete to kindly fuck off. He thought the smaller man way joking. Turns out he was horribly wrong. Because, from the very first moment-

“I loved you.” Pete mutters and he feels his heart throbbing just from those words. Mikey's expression breaks into something close to crying.

“And I still do.” The blond whispers. He stands up and with wiggly but long steps he's at Pete now and pulls him closer, kissing him hard.

 

_“So that's it?” Pete asked in a breathy tone. “We go our ways and grin at each other when we meet at tours or what?”_

_“Seems like it...” Mikey looked down at his feet. He lost his confidence for a moment and Pete saw it as his last chance to speak._

_“Please, baby.” Pete whispered, barely audible. “Is this my fault? ‘Cause I can change, and I really mean it. Just please, don’t leave me, I couldn’t cope with that. I will change, Mikeyway. I know I could, for you.” Pete tried and took Mikey's hands in his. The brunette didn’t pull away this time. “Just tell me what to do. I can't lose- can't lose you.”_

_“Fuck, Pete, is this your way of ‘not making it harder’?” Mikey huffed and looked up, now his face shiny from the tears as well. “We need to stop this, please, just accept this was a romance destined to die because just in a day I’m going back to Jersey and you’re going on tour again and god knows when will I see you again and it’s already too painful because I just can’t deal with feeling I fell for you all too soon…”_

_“God damn it.” Pete murmured and grabbed Mikey by the collar of his Anthrax shirt. He pulled him into a kiss, tongues tangled together and hands on each other’s bodies already. Pete knew he wouldn’t survive if Mikey left him so he decided not to let him. The smaller man tugged the brunette closer, towards Mikey’s bunk. When he fell backwards on the mattress, Pete knew this would be their last night together. So he decided to make it the best as well._

“Mikey-” Pete moans as the drunk man runs a hand through his hair and kisses his neck. Millions of memories chase each other in his head, one more painful than the other. Mikey feels like love and feels like nothing had ever changed but Pete knows he shouldn’t, they are not like this, not twenty-somethings anymore, not two kids who can fuck just without any consequences. They are not those people anymore. “Mikey, stop.”

“Please, Pete, I need you, I want you–“ Mikey murmurs, voice low and broken. He sucks on Pete’s neck which mutes the smaller man successfully. It’s so hot, Pete feels himself growing harder and Mikey also feels it, apparently, because he puts his hand on Pete’s member, palming him through his pants.

“It’s not right, we can’t.” Pete mutters but then bites his lip because the voices coming from him would be contradictory to his words.

“Of course we can, Pete.” Mikey mumbles and backs Pete against the counter. “I love you.” he kisses him on the lips again and that’s when the smaller man knows they have to stop. Pete needs all his will to put his hands on Mikey’s chest and push him away. It would all only become harder from here and they have already been there once. Pete lets his head fall on the taller man’s shoulder and closes his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mikeyway.” Pete whispers between his tears and hugs Mikey’s waist. This ‘sorry’ contains everything; sorry because he’s grown up and knows this really won’t work out, not the second time. Sorry they couldn’t be this ten years ago and sorry he was not there for Mikey in the years prior. The drunk man stands still for a moment but then hugs back, arms around the smaller one’s shoulders. He understands it all from just the hug. Ten years ago, something broke and they didn’t match anymore.

There are just some things that time can’t fix.

_“Hey, buddy, you alright?” Patrick asked Pete on the tour bus the next day. It was sunny and they were finally heading home. The black haired man was sitting by the window all morning, a pen and his black notebook of lyrics in his hands, looking as if it was the end of the world._

_“Wha- I didn’t see you coming here, ‘Trick, sorry.” Pete mumbled and yawned. His night was very long and tiring, both physically and mentally._

_“Yeah, that’s what you get when you do it all night long in another band’s wagon.” Patrick smiled knowingly but when he saw Pete’s expression he stopped immediately. “Really now, is everything okay?”_

_“No, it’s not.” Pete confessed, thinking about how he left early in the morning, writing a note on Mikey’s arm with the first eyeliner he found in Gerard’s bunker. It was his luck that the other members of MCR were out all night celebrating the end of the summer. “Trust me, I’m not O-fucking-K.”_

_“Well, I know it’s something big when you’re quoting someone else but yourself.” Patrick commented, trying to cheer Pete up but it didn’t happen. “Was it me?” the singer asked after a moment._

_“What? No, you have done nothing wrong.” Pete shook his head, frowning. Patrick could never do anything to hurt him, or anybody else, apparently._

_“Was it Mikey?” Patrick suggested quietly. He knew from the look on Pete’s face that it was a bingo. “Did he hurt you?” Patrick was not a fighter but if anybody hurt the ones he loved, he could be pretty fucking scary._

_“Depends on what we mean under hurting.” The bassist shrugged but felt his heart tighten. “Does making me fall in love with him then breaking up with me count? ‘Cause then he_ did _hurt me, a lot.” Pete spoke in a monotone voice, still looking at the trees and things passing them by as the bus was rolling._

 _“Gosh, I’m sorry.” Patrick caressed Pete’s arm sympathetically. “If I can do anything for you- wait, did you say_ love _?” the ginger man stopped in the middle of the sentence._

_“Yeah, I think I did.” Pete nodded. They both knew ‘love’ was not a word Pete used easily. It seemed to be fitting for what he felt for Mikey, though. “I don’t mean to be an ass, but could you leave me alone, ‘Trick? I need some sleep now.” Pete asked, looking at his friend with what he tried to keep a neutral expression but Patrick knew better._

_“If you need anything… I mean it.” Patrick said, and after no response came, with a small nod he left. Pete didn’t want to make the singer more worried so he was sure to only mutter when Patrick was far enough:_

_“Who I need is already on his way to Jersey.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This was an idea bothering me since the end of the summer, so a little bit late, but it's here! Please leave a comment and don't hate me too much for breaking your heart...


End file.
